The Super Bowl, World Cup, NBA Finals, Ryder Cup, Wimbledon, Kentucky Derby, BCS National Championship, Stanley Cup Finals, WrestleMania, Daytona 500 and World Series all have a claim as the best individual event in sports.
Unfortunately for those other sports and their scintillating events, college basketball’s NCAA Tournament reigns supreme as the best event in sports.
Don’t be mistaken—it’s a crowded field at the top. All of those first-listed events are thrilling times for sports fans, but there’s just something about March that keeps people engaged and waiting to print out brackets, talk trash to friends and co-workers about the perfect picks and watch as many games as humanly possible in the process (even if it means skipping work).
What started in 1939 with eight teams has ballooned to 68 teams and a three-week sprint in 2013 that includes the end of March (hence the name) and the first few days of April. This year is the 75th anniversary of college basketball’s premier tournament, but as we reflect on what has become the best event in sports, it’s important to learn a little bit about the history that made March Madness what it is today.
One of the ways to do that would be to check out NCAA.com’s 75th anniversary timeline, which features a complete breakdown of tournament winners and key moments from each year’s event. For a condensed version of this historic timeline, continue to scroll down and check out some of the key moments and ideas that have set the NCAA Tournament apart.
During the first 12 years of the tournament, only the best eight teams were invited to participate. Oregon won the inaugural event in ’39, Oklahoma AM picked up two titles and Adolph Rupp got his first three championships at Kentucky.
In 1952, the field expanded to include anywhere from 22 to 25 teams. In 1975, it started carrying 32. In 1979, that number moved to 40, and in 1980, it got all the way up to 48. Lucky for us, the tournament committee didn’t stop there.
The NCAA gave us 52 in 1983, and then 1985 started featuring the 64-team bracket that we all know and love. And just for good measure, the last decade has featured a variety of play-in games that has taken the bracket up to 68—the number we now employ full-time.
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There’s no doubt the early years of the tournament produced memories that have contributed to March Madness being one of the most highly anticipated time periods in sports each year.
Who could forget the San Francisco Dons in 1955 and 1956, when Bill Russell led the team to back-to-back titles before moving on to his legendary career with the Boston Celtics? Another memorable year was 1966, when the Texas Western Miners made history by starting five African-Americans en route to a championship win over Rupp and Kentucky in the final.
How about UCLA’s run of 10 titles in 12 seasons? Indiana’s perfect season in 1976? What about 1979, when Larry Bird and Indiana State took on Magic Johnson and Michigan State in a preview of what turned out to be the greatest sports rivalry of the 1980s? The 80s also featured a powerful Georgetown squad, “Phi Slamma Jamma” and one of the most memorable moments in sports history.
However, it’s really the last two decades that have set the tournament apart.
The increase in teams has allowed for more upsets. When filling out brackets, it’s nearly impossible to pick a correct tournament field these days, specifically because the number of good teams who don’t get a lot of press during the regular season now have a spot in March.
In fact, upsets are one of the biggest components of why March Madness has taken the No. 1 spot in sports. In what other sport are upsets such a common occurrence? Since seeding began, only once (2008) have all four No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four.
Upsets are great, and they are the clear No. 1 draw to what we’ll be looking for in 2013, but they aren’t the only reason to watch or enjoy March Madness.
Want offense? The tournament has plenty of it, from UNLV and Loyola Marymount in the early 1990s to North Carolina and Arizona at the turn of the century. Defense? Four of the last seven winners have held their opponent under 60 points.
Buzzer-beaters? Please. That’s the easiest part of the tournament to characterize. Bleacher Report’s Tyler Conway put together a list of the 25 best buzzer-beaters in March Madness history, and no one did it better than Duke’s Christian Laettner in the 1992 Final Four game against Kentucky.
Sports purists also have very little to complain about when watching the tournament.
For all the hoop-lah and complaints over the years about college athletes not getting paid, these young men are still battling for something that holds more water than any professional sports franchise. They play for pride, for the student sections that support them each game throughout the season and an extensive set of fans and alumni all over the world that bleed the colors of their schools.
Sure, there have been a few scandals. Vacated seasons include Memphis State in 1985, Memphis again under John Calipari and Connecticut over the last few seasons under the final few years of Jim Calhoun.
But those issues pale in comparison to the overall celebration that is March Madness.
Television coverage has only broadened the reach of the tournament. You can catch literally every game on CBS/TNT/TBS/TruTV, and that exposure has done wonders over the last couple of years to see moments (Murray State in 2010, Norfolk State in 2012) that you might not normally watch or even care about.
From upsets to exciting moments, the NCAA tournament has it all. Throw in the wide-ranging schools and cities that get a chance to experience these games first-hand, the storied history of over 75 years of March Madness and the purity of the game that professional sports doesn’t always offer, and it doesn’t get any better than college basketball’s final event of the year.
While the designation of No. 1 doesn’t mean as much as it used to in the tournament, it still means something when ranking sports’ premier annual events.
And that’s exactly where the NCAA tournament falls in that ranking—No. 1.
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